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Pan's Labyrinth
Picturehouse

Pan's Labyrinth reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 98 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.3 out of 10
based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 900 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for graphic violence and some language

Starring Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ariadna Gil, Doug Jones, Álex Angulo, Roger Casamajor, and César Vea

Guillermo del Toro delivers a unique, richly-imagined epic with Pan's Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression of Franco's Spain.


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Fantasy  |  Foreign  |  Horror  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Guillermo del Toro  
DIRECTED BY: Guillermo del Toro  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: May 15, 2007 
Theatrical: December 29, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Mexico / Spain / USA 
LANGUAGE(S): Spanish (with English subtitles) 

Received a total of 6 Academy Award nominations. Nominated, Golden Palm, 2006 Cannes Film Festival; Nominated Best Cinematography and Best Feature, 2007 Independent Spirit Awards. Original title "El Laberinto del Fauno."

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
This is like no movie you've seen before, a haunting mixture of horror, history and fantasy that works simultaneously on every level.
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100
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Pan's Labyrinth Like his terrific 2001 "The Devil’s Backbone," Mexican horrormeister Guillermo del Toro's new movie offers us both real-life and fantastical monsters, and if you know his work, you won't waste time figuring out which to root for.
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100
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.
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100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The result of the intricate interplay is a fairy tale for adults that is violent, sometimes shocking, yet utterly engrossing. And eerily instructive; it deepens our emotional understanding of fascism, and of rigid ideology's dire consequences.
100
The New York Times A.O. Scott
A swift and accessible entertainment, blunt in its power and exquisite in its effects.
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100
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Unlike most horror movies, this chiller gives equal prominence to reality and fantasy, though the reality is far more frightening. The only precedent that comes to mind in terms of a lyrical treatment of a child's experience of terror is "The Night of the Hunter."
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100
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Del Toro's film ranks with the best examinations of children's inner lives, but be warned: Its haunting insights are best left to adults.
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100
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.
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100
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Nothing this year comes close to being as utterly unforgettable as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, an extremely dark and disturbing fairy tale for audiences say, ages 12 and up.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.
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100
Premiere Glenn Kenny
This intense film, a mix of horror, fantasy, and history that convinces on all those levels and mixes them up with dizzying brio, is a searing cinematic experience, a beautiful, terrifying vision from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
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100
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Literally and figuratively marvelous, a rich, daring mix of fantasy and politics.
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100
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.
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100
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
In tone, Pan's Labyrinth resembles a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and H.P. Lovecraft, with some Buñuel thrown in for good measure. It is a tribute to - as well as a prime example of - the disturbing power of imagination.
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100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Like the folk tales from centuries past, Pan's Labyrinth is a dark odyssey with nightmarish visions and cruel threats, but coming through the sacrifice and suffering is the childlike belief in magic and imagination that for Del Toro represents the hope and optimism of a happily ever after in this cruel world.
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100
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
These creatures of the underworld are the fervid fabrications of del Toro's imagination: More than once they will catch you by surprise and make you gasp.
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100
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Pan's Labyrinth is a transcendent work of art.
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100
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the invigorating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.
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100
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
This is the breakthrough work of one of world cinema's most visionary artists.
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100
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
With this film, del Toro seems to have created his manifesto, a tour de force of cautionary zeal, humanism and magic. At this writing, Pan's Labyrinth is the best-reviewed film of 2006 listed on the movie review Web site Metacritic.com, and for a reason: It's just that great.
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100
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Like any great myth, Pan's Labyrinth encodes its messages through displays of magic. And like any good fairy tale, it is also embroidered with threads of death and loss.
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100
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
We don't find out until the last scene how reality and fantasy intersect, when the meaning of the first shot of the film gets driven home. How many movies have you seen with a payoff like that?
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100
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Del Toro presents one dazzling visual spectacle after another.
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100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.
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100
Empire Kim Newman
Dark, twisted and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
One of the greatest of all fantasy films.
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91
The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
After two hours of dazzlingly fantastical images and stomach-turning gore, del Toro winds around, and finds his story's center.
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90
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
So smartly has del Toro thought his fable through, and so graceful is his grasp of visual rhyme, that to pick holes in it seems mean; yet Pan's Labyrinth is perhaps more dazzling than involving--I was too busy reading its runes and clues, as it were, to be swept away. It is, I suspect, a film to return to, like a country waiting to be explored: a maze of dead ends and new life.
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90
Film Threat Don R. Lewis
The action scenes are exciting, the fantasy scenes are creative and the war scenes are brutal.
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90
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
With Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro has made his most accomplished film to date, a dark and disturbing fairy tale for adults that's been thought out to the nth degree and resonates with the irresistible inevitability of a timeless myth.
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90
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
This is a true fairy tale, and one of the finest fantasy pictures ever made, but please do not take your young children to see it unless you want them to be scarred for life.
Read Full Review
88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The lack of family friendliness does not diminish what del Toro has achieved with this magical motion picture.
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88
USA Today Claudia Puig
Pan's Labyrinth artfully fuses a war film with a family melodrama and a fairy tale. The result is visually stunning and emotionally shattering.
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80
New York Magazine David Edelstein
His palette here is deep-toned, with bottomless blacks and supersaturated oranges and blues--as if the Walt Disney of "Pinocchio" had collaborated with Goya.
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80
Newsweek David Ansen
Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.
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80
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
The performers are all good with Baquero poised and beautiful as Ofelia and Verdu vital and spirited as the rebellious Mercedes. Lopez gives an extraordinary performance as the bestial captain, an irredeemable villain to rank with Ralph Fiennes' Nazi in "Schindler's List."
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80
Variety Justin Chang
There's plenty of blood -- both literal and figurative -- coursing through the veins of Pan's Labyrinth, a richly imagined and exquisitely violent fantasy from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 900 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Cricket C. gave it a0:
I did not like it. the fantasy figures were too obscure. The movie was shown as part of a foreign film series at the local college. Only 30% of the class showed up. Probably had seen it before.

David O. gave it a9:
A beautifully told allegory about power, love, innocence.. I could go on, but firstly... Nathaniel Z, what are you sniffing?! You say you haven't got time to properly criticize the movie. Well, don't. Your self-important opinions are misguided and, at their worst, completely irrelevant. For example, you say Del Toro is obese, but my next door neighbor has an orange cat (and if that confuses you, you've just subtly got my point)... Del Toro rocks. I could hug his big, cuddly ass. P.S. What are you even doing reading this anyway? I won't be bothering; better things to do.

Nathaniel Z. gave it a1:
I'm going to be honest to Director del Toro, because if he was here right now, I'd torture him like one of the tortured martyrs in his obsolete "movie". I loathed it so much that I had to stop watching it for some 5 minutes, thinking about why those Mexicans or Spanish people had no common sense to release this to an English-speaking audience and then come back to watch the rest of this poorly made fantasy! That's how much I abhorred it! It's so ambiguous and silly, I can't possibly understand why critics rendered it with praise! But- Let me just stop my ranting and clarify- in lucid English that the obese del Toro can understand- why this movie was so repulsive. Violence, well hey! It's in almost every single movie! But in this one, the violence is unrealistic. Let me explain why... 1. Why is there so much blood? I mean, I'm not symbolically protesting, but practically, human blood does not hemmorage that profusely, study some anatomy! 2. The battles are so unrealistic, how can the so-called "Capitan" be killing off guerrillas from long-range with a luger pistol that only fires short-range? Study marksmanship! 3. How can blood be flowing from Ofelia's nose?(See! They can't even spell "Ophelia" right!) When she's shot in the stomach? Again, study some anatomy! This movie is also filled with so many Hollywood cliches to make you shiver, the Captain is the only one that implies the scariness in the film, but balance the role of frightening authority to other people! Stupid! Unfortunately, I cannot waste valuable time in my life criticizing this movie, I have so many distastes for it, that I cannot fill them all here. However, I have one detail to praise in this movie, the art direction, that was the most superb aspect that gave the film it's brightness, but not reason, I feel sorry for the people at the art direction department of production, they had to work with a director that was an obese jerk and they had to be responsible for abetting the production of the most poorly made fantasy flick next to the Lord of the Rings... ...And oh, speaking of the Lord of the Rings, del Toro's going to screw up the Tolkien legendarium even more by making a Hobbit companion movie (sheesh! You are unskilled)... ...And by the way, Tolkien is always screwed up.

Matt H gave it a4:
Visually stunning, with beautiful settings, decent acting and a truly haunting score this film suffers from one major flaw. It can not decide whether it wants to be a gripping and realistic war drama or a fantastical fairy tale and ultimately fails to be either. Really wanted to like this film, but in the end it is flat, pointless, needlessly violent and as others have said lacks "soul".

Joshua O. gave it a10:
For all the naysayers who gave this movie a low score, i'm sorry that you have zero imagination and must be spoon fed a boring run of the mill plot. But for those who enjoy the strange and enthralling worlds of mythos and fables, you will enjoy this movie. To end it I will say 4 words! BOTTLE IN THE FACE!

Steve J. gave it a10:
My wife & I rarely watch a rented movie twice--preferring to return the movie as soon as we can & get another one. This one we not only watched twice, but we also invited others to join us when we watched it the second time! Loved it!

Chen L. gave it a10:
What a beautiful movie.

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